Once again I and a minibus full of randomly selected strangers headed out over the misty Faroese roads. We had been promised sea cliffs and birds. At least one of these was guaranteed to be present. After a brief stop to enable the newcomers to enjoy the local prison we headed for the village of Vestmanna which had a harbour. At Veatmanna a modestly sized boat was tethered waiting for us. It turned out it was waiting for a fair few other people too. We were given a choice; did we want views and hypothermia or neither? If we selected option A then we might want to make sure we were first in the queue so we could get a spot on the top deck. Those who liked their extremities could stay below. Our guides had helped with the decision making process by making sure we arrived early but we almost blew it by lingering in the gift shop relishing the last shreds of warmth we would feel for some time.
Still we made it and I like most of my fellows clambered up taking a stranglehold on the best viewing positions. With little fanfare our boat headed along the harbour towards the open sea. Along the way steep sided hills sloped sharply down to the water. The inevitable sheep grazed there maintaining their balance presumably by having two legs shorter than the others. An unworthy desire to see one of the woolly steeplejacks tumble into the bay rose within me but fortunately for the sheep I had no means of initiating the process.
Once out of the bay (or fjord I should call it) the sea became wild and rough. Or to put it another way the Atlantic was perfectly calm but for people raised on dry land our inevitable capsizing seemed only a matter of time. We took a sharp right turn and skirted the cliffs. The cliffs were very cliffy indeed. They towered sheer above us and the promised seabirds swooped and circled in the sky around.
It was spectacular and not the mist or the drizzle or the biting wind or the bitter cold could; sorry I seem to have lost my train of thought. Anyway it was spectacular in a wild and lonely way. Apparently feeling we weren’t impressed enough our captain steered us directly towards the cliffs. We were impressed then a little concerned and then outright terrified as he weaved his ship through narrow, sea carved inlets with birds shrieking above us waiting to feast on any survivors. I said before that the boat wasn’t that large. Right now it felt like a battleship as it snaked its way through rock fissures only slightly wider than it was.
With towering cliffs on three and a half sides of us we gasped in awe and no little relief as our noble steed weaved gracefully through wave lashed rock stacks and finally back not so much to the open sea as to the less immediately enclosed sea.
I SAW A PUFFIN! It came barrelling out of some cliff and hurtled past us but I saw it plainly, stripy beak and all. I’m very pleased I saw it as our guides have been delicately lowering expectations for our trip to puffin island over the last few days. It’s the end of the season apparently and the puffins are disinclined to hang around. At least I have seen one close enough for a positive identification. With my cup running over and my eyelids freezing shut the boat turned its head for home. After which the tour owner took us home to meet his mother.
Back in Torshavn with a few hours to spend I decided to use them walking to the national museum (the Faroes are not technically a nation but don’t mention that). I set off following the coastline from my hotel. Shortly before I fell into the sea the road turned inland and I turned with it. The area started to look familiar and I realised I had actually walked back to the vicinity of our guide’s mother’s house. She had given us cake the first time we turned up but I couldn’t expect repeat performance so I carried on walking.
A stream ran through some rough ground covered in grass and wildflowers so I left the road and walked through that instead. There were also trees dotted about the place. I mentioned in an earlier blog entry that the Faroes were distinctly short on trees. I may also have made some smartarse comment about trees being especially grown so that children know what they are before they visit the mainland. Well it turns out the Faroese government is way ahead of me. All of the trees I saw had been planted by children as part of a specific government initiative. Even so most of what I walked through was heathland rather than forest.
I made it to the museum half an hour before closing time. Shall we say I wasn’t so much steeped in Faroese culture as lightly dipped. The one fact that I remember is that apparently in the sixteenth century there was a great sheep mortality and most of the sheep on the Faroes died. But I couldn’t find out why. The sheep one now sees covering every exposed surface are the descendants of the sheep imported to replace the dead. There was also stuff on fishing, Vikings and a display of a couple of skeletons to prove that even converting to Christianity is no guarantee that some curious bugger isn’t going to dig up your corpse at some time in the future and put it on display.
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